Wednesday, February 25. 2015

Copy & Paste: The history of film is one of influences, references, and homages between creative minds. Join F.W. Murnau, Werner Herzog, Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki and Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet in our latest GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto March 3 + 5 + 10 as these influential filmmakers remake, remix, reimagine film and films in three screenings of double features.

The L.A. Times reviewed Herzog's newly released NOSFERATU treatment recently and commented on the Murnau-Herzog relationship:“I should caution you, it’s not a remake.” When Werner Herzog gives a warning, it is advisable to heed it. So do not call his 1979 film “Nosferatu The Vampyre” a remake of the 1922 film "Nosferatu” by F.W. Murnau. Rather consider it an interpretation or tribute. In his review of the initial release of the film, Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas called it “a film of astonishing beauty and daring… not a horror picture but one of eerie wonderment and bizarre spectacle.”

The story of the film is familiar as a man named Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is called on a long journey to the remote castle of Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski). The count later appears in the city with seeming designs on Harker’s wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani).

Friday, February 20. 2015

From music sampling and file sharing, to 3D printing and DNA patents, to pop stars, like Taylor Swift, who seek to copyright memorable lines from their songs – today’s world is dominated by issues around authorship and ownership. Of course, people have been borrowing, stealing, remaking, adapting, and reimagining the ideas of others as long as there has been something like ‘culture.’

Early producers of moving images borrowed copiously from each other, reshooting, restaging, recasting, and flat-out copying the short subjects circulating in an emerging film industry. The eventual regulation of property and copyright in the new medium did not put a stop to the practice of remaking, but rather defined how remaking would continue in a legal and institutional framework.
Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS March: Copy & Paste, from..." »

Friday, February 13. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and visitors, from rookies to veterans.

Name & role: Piers Handling, Director and Chief Executive Officer of TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival since 1994

This is my 29th Berlinale.

What’s your “mission” at Berlinale 2015?
To keep Toronto visible and to make our international contacts aware that we are present and vigilant. I see key contacts in the industry in Berlin - sales agents, producers, filmmakers - especially from Europe, as most of them attend. I get a feel for how they felt about last year's Toronto festival; if there were any major issues, what we could improve etc. I also see films just to keep my hand on the pulse, especially films in the Forum, as well as some of the competition titles from non-American directors, as many of the major art house names premiere in Berlin. I talk about our year-round initiatives, what is going on in our building, TIFF Bell Lightbox and how it is doing. Last year I had numerous meetings around our David Cronenberg exhibition which travelled to The Eye in Amsterdam and whose next stop is Italy.

Thursday, February 12. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and visitors, from rookies to veterans.

Name & role: Andra Takacs, international entertainment professional & travelling (Toronto-based) film buff

This is my 1st Berlinale – and my expectation of it:
I’m very keen on the Wim Wenders retrospective. As I am attending the festival for the “back half”, I’m glad I won't be so caught up in the opening weekend hype of a festival.

Your favourite international film festival & why?
To date, no festival has been able to top the Toronto International Film Festival for the breadth of film programming and the ability to draw the talent. I live for the post-screening Q&A sessions and am impressed by the presence of directors & actors at the 2nd or 3rd screening of their films.

Thursday, February 12. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and visitors, from rookies to veterans.

Name and role: Kaila E. Simoneau, PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at York University, Toronto

This is your 1st Berlinale—biggest fear and biggest expectation:
My biggest fear and biggest expectation are the same: the fast pace at which it is going to happen. As an anthropologist, I come from a discipline where “field research” is often conducted over long, immersive stretches. Typically, researchers spend a great deal of time in a location, gradually discovering what is interesting or relevant by practicing an engaged form of “hanging out.” But film festivals like the Berlinale unfurl quickly, in just a matter of days—and there is always more than one thing happening! It’s exciting to be in the midst of, and reflective of the state of today’s increasingly globally interconnected, mediated and highly mobile world. But there is always the fear of missing something—an event, a person or an especially fantastic film screening.

Wednesday, February 11. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers & shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the programmers, curators, industry promoters & visitors, from rookies to veterans.

Name & role: Noah Cowan, Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society since March 2014. He joined SFFS after five years at the helm of TIFF Bell Lightbox, the landmark cinema museum space in Toronto.

This is my ...th Berlinale.

No idea. Maybe 15th?

What’s your focus at Berlinale 2015?Last-minute films for the San Francisco International Film Festival. And spreading the word about our future plans linking the film and tech worlds - and the importance of San Francisco as a film financing and production center. No-one knows the Film Society is the largest not-profit funder of feature films in America!

Tuesday, February 10. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and visitors, from rookies to veterans.

What does a typical day at the Berlinale look like for you?
EXTREMELY BUSY. It is incredibly nice to meet everyone I am in touch with all year long, but it is a challenge to find the right balance between quality and productive time. This year even more so since all important partners and friends of the Foundation will come to Berlin to celebrate Wim with us!Continue reading "Berlinale People: Laura Schmidt, Wenders..." »

Sunday, February 8. 2015

Part of a series of mini profiles on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and visitors, from rookies to veterans.

Name & role: Dieter Kosslick, Artistic Director and Head of Berlinale.
Previously speechwriter for Hamburg’s First Mayor, executive director of the Cultural Film Fund Hamburg and Film Foundation NRW, and co-founder of the European Film Distribution Office, among others.

This is my 14th Berlinale (as its director, but the 32nd overall).
It's like a marriage and a love affair rolled into one: I have been attending the Berlinale since 1983 and I'm still in love with the festival. We now have 10 different sections, and it's still thrilling to bring all these creative people, films and events together. The Berlinale is a democratic festival, not necessarily in its selection of films (laughs), but in its accessibility to everybody. That's just great for film lovers.

Wednesday, February 4. 2015

The Berlinale is just like its director Dieter Kosslick: Technically pension age but not slowing down, and wittier, slier, bolder, more comfortable with itself than before.

As the Berlinale celebrates its 65th anniversary, Golden Bear-honoured guest Wim Wenders turns 70 with a new film and is enjoying his third Oscar nomination.

We have a new Andreas Dresen world premiere to look forward to, 25 years after he was the first young East German filmmaker to show at the 1990 Berlinale, in a not-yet-reunited Germany. Another first: A Terence Malick world premiere in the German capital. Kosslick promises his friend’s elusive presence (in 2006, both men stood outside during THE NEW WORLD premiere, so you might have to look for his “presence”).

Saturday, January 31. 2015

Last summer I had the chance to skype with Andreas Dresen --full disclosure: one of my favourite auteurs-- about his 1992 feature debut "Silent Country", which we showed on 35mm to amazed audiences in Toronto in the fall of 2014. Read the first part of my interview with Dresen here. His latest film "Als wir träumten" (German trailer), again set in the GDR around the "Wende", is in Competition at Berlinale 2015; his first experience as a young East German filmmaker at Berlinale 1990 as well as his upcoming project on a controversial GDR figure he talks about here:

JB: Andreas, your father had left the GDR in the 70s. In “Silent Country” the question is raised: Should I stay or should I go? Your protagonists in the film keep joking ‘See you in Hollywood!’, an impossibility for them. You yourself were a young film student from East Berlin in early 1989/90. Did you think of leaving?

AD: Early in May 1989, 30 of us went to Paris, with Lothar Bisky [the then Film Academy President and later left-wing German MEP] – can you imagine! And I was one of them, even though my father had left for West Germany. Bisky wanted his students to see the world. How he managed to do it, I have no idea. During the trip I seriously thought about staying. Paris in May, that was quite a temptation. And then when we got back to East Berlin… the hot dog stand next to the “Palace of Tears” [the Berlin nickname for the former border crossing at Berlin Friedrichstraße train station, where East Germans said teary goodbyes to visitors going back to West Germany], that wasn’t very elating. In that moment I thought: now I have made a major mistake in my life. It would have been easier to stay in the West, but none of us students did it. Which says a lot.
In the end, I can’t run away from myself and the world but I can change the place where I live. If I leave, I might not have the same problems that I had before. But I will have new ones. I can exchange my country for another, and maybe it is more comfortable elsewhere, but if I walk around this new world with open eyes, sooner or later I will realize that this and that and the other doesn’t feel right. And what then? Do I leave again? Will I start a new life once more? This is basically what the ending of “Silent Country” is about: the protagonist thinks about leaving, but turns around and goes back to that grey village, because he says: If I don’t make it at the theatre here, I won’t make it elsewhere. New York is also very much a province. The province is what we make provincial. And, if you want, the centre of the world can be pretty much everywhere you want it to be.
Of course everybody has to make that decision for themselves. Back then I felt that leaving would not do me much good. There were people who left and had a very good reason for it; people who had huge problems in the GDR, to the point that it wasn’t worth staying.

JB: How does your next film position itself in regard to “Silent Country”? It also carries a GDR theme that – at least chronologically – connects to “Silent Country”.

Wednesday, January 28. 2015

Over the summer I had the chance to skype with Andreas Dresen -full disclosure: one of my favourite auteurs- about his 1992 feature debut "Silent Country", which we showed on 35mm to amazed audiences in Toronto recently. In the film, young, naive and enthusiastic theatre director Kai comes to a grim East German provincial town to put on Beckett's “Waiting for Godot”. Although the lethargic company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted. Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place. Great hopes emerge in the little town, and unexpected events overtake Kai's derailed production. Reflections of and on Dresen's own life and work are inevitable. His latest film "Als wir träumten" (German trailer), again set in the GDR around the "Wende", is in Competition at Berlinale 2015.

Jutta Brendemühl: Your first major feature film, shot in 1991 and set during the last days of the GDR, is called “Silent Country” – ”Stilles Land” in the original German. In how far did you experience Germany around 1989 as “still”, silent or quiet?

Andreas Dresen: A country can be “still” if it is paralyzed, if nothing happens anymore, when there is no going forward or backward. “Still” as standstill. But “still” can also be a poetic entity in which we can find ourselves. The title therefore has a double meaning. The pivotal point was a poem by Wolf Biermann of the same title: “Das Land ist still” - the county is silent. And it surely has a mean streak to it, too. In the film, nobody reacts to the political events that happen outside the theatre – the escape of many GDR citizens via Hungary. It seriously was that “silent” in September 1989.

Tuesday, January 20. 2015

Berlinale Bloggers 2015 – International Film Journalists report for Goethe.de

As guests of the Goethe-Institut, bloggers and film journalists from six countries are going to the Berlinale again this February to share their impressions. After last year's inaugural success, our sophomore edition of Berlinale Bloggers has writers travelling to Berlin from Egypt, China (Beijing and Hongkong), Brazil, Spain, and Japan to take a closer look at films from their country:

How are Chinese films represented at the Berlin Film Festival? Which interesting Brazilian co-productions have been invited? What expectations do Egyptian filmmakers have going into the Berlinale?

Jutta Brendemühl from the Goethe-Institut Toronto will look at the big picture(s) and keep an eye on trends and news. She will also take you behind the scenes with a series of short portraits of the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale the Berlinale, called "Berlinale People". The coverage is rounded off with film reviews by the "Talent Press", a joint project of the Berlinale Talent Campus, Goethe-Institut, and FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics) that invites young international film critics to Berlin.

Visit www.goethe.de/berlinale closer to the festival to meet and follow all of our global bloggers during the Berlinale 2015. I will kick off for our multi-national newsroom on 28 January with a first overview of Berlinale highlights and trends right here. Then drop by daily for interviews with the likes of Berlinale boss Dieter Kosslick and TIFF head Piers Handling.

Friday, January 16. 2015

German director Wim Wenders has been nominated for an Oscar® in the category of Best Documentary Feature. Other nominations went to the German co-productions CITIZENFOUR by Berlin-based Laura Poitras (DE/US) and THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL by Wes Anderson (GB/DE). German producers Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy were nominated in the category of Best Documentary Feature for CITIZENFOUR. The composer Hans Zimmer has been nominated in the category of Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) for INTERSTELLAR.

About German Film @ Canada

German Film @ Canada blog

Festival news & reviews, insights & updates, background & interviews.
The latest on German film in Canada, Germany & beyond.
Highlighting the impressive international presence of German directors & productions.
Announcing our series & screenings and those of our major industry partners.For film experts & fans of German film.

Our blogger

You will hear from us from around the world of film. Our blogger Jutta Brendemühl is the Goethe-Institut Toronto's Program Curator and happy to hear from you.

Jutta is lucky to love what she does: arts & cultural programming across the genres & through a global lens. Over the past 15 years, she has worked with Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Rauschenberg, Wim Wenders, Pina Bausch, and other luminaries. She has an M.A. in English Literature.